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This comforting, cheesy ground beef and zucchini casserole is a true one-pot dinner you can throw together quickly, and it makes fantastic leftovers. You’ll want to make this delicious, homemade comfort food a permanent part of your meal plan.
Did you wake up this morning with a bag of zucchini on your front porch from your sneaky gardening neighbor? Hi, it’s me. I’m that neighbor, and I feel zero guilt for “squashing” everyone on my street.
If you find yourself trying to use up excess summer squash, this ground beef and zucchini casserole is the one-pot dinner of your dreams!
And while I recommend how much mozzarella and Parmesan to add to this recipe, we all know that cheese should truly be measured with your heart.
For the marinara, store-bought is fine! Look for a jar that is ~20 oz. And don’t forget to add a teeny bit of water to the empty jar, put the lid on, and shake it up to get every last drop out and into your ground beef zucchini casserole.
You might also love to use our homemade freezer spaghetti sauce in this recipe.
Take it from me – don’t skip the process of salting and pressing the zucchini between two clean towels while you make the sauce. This helps draw out moisture from the squash so that your ground beef zucchini casserole doesn’t become too watery.
Pro Tips/Recipe Notes
- Thinly sliced zucchini works best for this recipe. I used my mandoline to make sure the slices are consistently the same size.
- To cut down on dishes, use a dish that can go directly from the stove to the oven. Something like a 4-quart Dutch oven or a braiser pan would work great. If you don’t have something that will work, follow steps 1-7 in the printable recipe card below, and then transfer to a deep 9×13 casserole dish to bake
Cheesy Ground Beef and Zucchini Casserole (One Pot)
Ingredients
- 3 cups zucchini {thinly sliced}
- 1/4 tsp sea salt
- 1 lb ground beef
- 2 cloves garlic {finely minced}
- 1/2 cup onion {finely diced}
- 2 1/2 cups prepared marinara
- 1 tsp dried basil
- 1/4 tsp dried oregano
- 1/4 cup heavy cream {optional}
- 1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella (divided)
- 1/2 cup shredded Parmesan
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350˚F.
- Thinly slice the zucchini and place the rounds on clean kitchen towels. Sprinkle evenly with sea salt.1/4 tsp sea salt
- Lay a clean towel over the top of the zucchini slices and place something heavy (like a casserole dish or Dutch oven) over the top. Set aside.
- In a large frying pan, braiser pan, or Dutch oven, brown the ground beef over medium heat.1 lb ground beef
- When the ground beef is almost fully cooked, add the garlic and onions and cook for an additional 1-2 minutes.2 cloves garlic, 1/2 cup onion
- Drain any grease if needed.
- Add the marinara sauce, basil, oregano, and slowly stir in the heavy cream (if using). Allow the sauce to simmer for ~2 minutes.2 1/2 cups prepared marinara, 1 tsp dried basil, 1/4 cup heavy cream, 1/4 tsp dried oregano
- Remove ~two-thirds of the sauce from the pan and put it into a bowl. Set aside.
- Top the sauce left in the pan with half of the zucchini slices and sprinkle with half of the mozzarella.3 cups zucchini, 1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella (divided)
- Distribute the remainder of the sauce over the zucchini and cheese.
- Top that with the remaining zucchini, mozzarella, and all of the Parmesan.1/2 cup shredded Parmesan
- Bake at 350˚ for 25-30 minutes or until the top of the cheese is lightly browned and the sauce is bubbling.
- Allow it to rest for 5-10 minutes and serve.
Notes
- To cut down on dishes, use a dish that can go directly from the stove to oven. Something like a 4-quart Dutch oven or a braiser pan would work great. If you don’t have something that will work, follow steps 1-7 above, and then transfer to a deep 9×13 casserole dish to bake.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
The recipe calls for 3 cups of zucchini. In the directions #9 it says to add half of the zucchini, but underneath it says the whole 3 cups. Just checking that’s a typo. Happy to see a recipe I can eat! Thank you.
Hi Diane, thanks for asking. It’s not a typo, more like a limitation of the software. You’ll notice the same with the cheese.
I can only add the ingredient amount to a step with how it appears in the measurements above (it doesn’t let us edit the measurements that show up under instructions on our end. It’s just a drop and drag kind of situation).
The only way to get around it would be to add the zucchini to the ingredients twice as “1.5 cups zucchini” and “1.5 cups zucchini”. And then people would miss that they needed to do addition, and then they’d go to make a recipe without the correct starting measurements.
The only real work around is spelling out in the instructions how much I actually need someone to use in that specific step.